MIA wrote something noteworthy, so instead of commenting on it, I thought I’d share it with everyone:
John:
I rarely if ever cross post. But this time I am. I really tried hard to keep the invectives down. There are a lot of types who try to intellectualize the game and in so doing, really lack context in understanding sport in America. I suppose it is because so many are nihilist and self centered in their world view, and in so doing will excuse all kinds of ridiculous behavior from others, just so long as it is not their own ox that is getting gored. Anyway here it is.
A team consists of players. At the MLB level, specifically, players coaches, manager and trainers. These are guys that are suited up. This is what you need to play the game.
Add suits and now you have a franchise. Suits need players to have a franchise. Players do not need suits to field a team. A franchise needs fans. A team does not need fans. By that I mean two teams of 9 players each with equipment and a field can play the game. Anytime, anyplace. Without owners. Without a “Ballpark Experience.” As has been happening for over 150 years. It happens someplace in the world everyday. And there are no owners nor fans. A few close friends, or family maybe. Thats it.
Guys that come up in the game know this. Most guys who play this game never play in front of crowds of more than a few hundred. For the truly gifted and fortunate, maybe a trip to the College Worlds Series, and some AAA ballparks. But by and large, baseball is not played in front of many fans, until MLB – which is why it is called “The Show.”
It is at this point that fans enter into the picture. And right in front of them are the guys waiting to take their money. It is no coincidence, this confluence of “fans” and “ownership.” Owners came about when they saw an opportunity to make money off a game. An opportunity to sell an illusion to fans and extend the illusion beyond childhood They organized leagues and took over the administrative duties of running baseball teams from the guys who actually played the game.
These guys evolved into the modern owner of today. Not good enough to play, but country-club rich enough and compelled enough to inject themselves into the game. Clever enough, and political enough to manipulate their way into positions of power. Not with baseball talent nor an inculcation of baseball culture, but with money and influence. Owners, who in exchange for providing team clerical and administrative duties for players, swindle large municipalities out of real estate, build a moat around the real estate, then charge “fans” money to cross the moat and watch “the show.” Some of the money actually finds it’s way into the hands of the players who are mostly looked upon as performers in a media-driven, dehumanizing process that is designed to maximize revenue, and minimize expenses.
Bud Selig, George Steinbrenner, Jeffrey Loria, Charlie Finley, Charlie Comisky, George W. Bush, David Glass, Carl Pohlad, Frank and Jamie McCourt, Ken Kendricks and now Peter Magowan. All of whom came into the game with a groupie-like enthusiasm to be part of the process. Like some White House Intern, all giddy and wide-eyed to be in the presence of what they could never be. And when the sheen wears off, and the novelty of being an “insider” loses its appeal. And when the reality that hanging out with your idols does not make you an idol sets in, then the bitterness and envy that seethed beneath the surface, begins to build and eventually oozes its way to the surface.
We fans have been fortunate to have two really good and one pretty good ownership groups in the Bay Area. The Haas family when they rescued the A’s from the loathsome and cruel Charlie Finley, and Eddie DeBartolo being the former in that they treated fans with respect and provided championship ball. Horace Stoneham ran out of money, but he was a baseball man steeped in the culture of baseball. A rarity for one who never played the game. The Giants teams of the 60s were some of the best to ever compete in the National League. During the 18 year period of his stewardship in San Francisco, he gave us Five Hall of Famers, and the father of perhaps the greatest player of all time: Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal, Gaylord Perry, Orlando Cepeda, and Bobby Bonds. Peter Magowan, self-styled baseball expert has given us, a castle with a moat, usuriously priced admission, concessions and parking and a “ballpark experience” rivaled only by Alcatraz Tours and take-out crab cocktails at Fisherman’s Wharf.
I also think he’s going to paint one of his overpriced bleacher seats a special color to commerorate some event or something.
The team consists of players and a franchise consists of a team plus the supporting cast who control the money. And I never confuse the two. The supporting cast to me is not relevant except what they do to enhance the ability of the team to compete for championships. Other than that, they are non-productive pariahs at worst, a logistical necessity at best. But its really about the players. Who even in the end of their careers are greatly talented individual professional athletes and do routinely on a daily basis what we can only dream about doing if only for once in our life. Most of us have much respect for the care, dedication to, development of, and exposition of that talent. And we wish to remember that talent and honor that talent and pass that respect along to our children and grandchildren. The good and the bad.
Others of small mind and pettiness of character choose to surrender to their innermost smallness. Too late they realize that not a one of us will ever pay a dime to watch them do their jobs. And they eventually fade away into their smallness and bitterness, their massive insecurities and egomania consuming them in the end.
For Magowan to say and do the things he is doing smacks of Dick Cheney. When asked, politely for his thoughts when informed that 2/3 of the American people disapprove of the way this administration is running the Iraq war his response was: “So?” And does anybody think Magowan’s answer would be any different when informed that most Giants fans disapprove of the way he is treating Barry Bonds?
No. I won’t be spending anytime at all there. I will not voluntarily spend money or patronize an enterprise that I find ethically and morally reprehensible. I will root for the players. I will enjoy Kruk and the gang. And I will enjoy the actual games themselves. It took four years for Magowan to finally reveal himself to be the snake I started maintaining he was in 2003. I would rather he had proved me wrong.
Not much for me to add, really. I remember when Magowan ran Dusty out of town because he felt like he wasn’t getting enough credit. That was the beginning of the end, right there. The last four years has been an almost non-stop slide into obscurity.
14 Backtalkers
The short-sightedness is amazing. Even Bruce Jenkins knows Giants baseball is about tradition. When I was a kid, my dad told me Willie Mays was the best and so I liked Willie Mays. Then I liked Bobby Bonds and McCovey. It was super-special when the Giants signed Barry Bonds because of the continuity from my childhood (and also Barry’s since we are about the same age) and I’ve obsessed on the Giants since 1993. Dishonoring him feels like dishonoring me and the family ties back to my father, his father, and his godfather.
The funny thing is that until this year I saw the Giants’ marketing as the strong suit of the MaGowan regime. They were great about keeping Mays, McCovery Cepeda, etc., involved with the franchise, they staged some really classy Old-Timers days, they brought back Lon Simmons, etc. Now with the erasure of Bonds from collective memory, even this has gotten away from them.
Hard to believe how quickly the Giants and 49ers have turned from a source of local pride into a really unpleasant and embarrassing experience.
Yup. I would add that there are ownership groups that care and act like they care about winning. They are few and far between to be sure; often arrogant, inept, and ridiculous, to be sure; but, they do exist. For me? I care and I too watch for the players and the announcers and my fellow fans. Ownership? I loathe them and I haven’t respected their (lack of) plan for about five years. I revert to fantasyland and play an occasional Strat-o-Matic game (dice and cards) with the 2007 players. To make them respectable, I add a McCovey card at 1B and a personalized card at CF. I can dream, can’t I?
Say what they say about Bonds. The fans largely know that it’s bullshit; it IS bullshit after all. I hold out hope that the Giants will be so absolutely terrible that even McGowan will be forced to do something. An injury to Cain or Lincecum and this team (to me) is 1962 Mets bad. And those comments aren’t exactly earth-shattering news to anyone here.
The one deal that I revert back to is that the Padres traded a mediocre SP and a mediocre RP to the Rangers for Adrian Gonzalez and Chris Young. Had Sabean listened to me
(I’m dreaming I know) yelling from the sidelines, Jason Schmidt would have gone there (or somewhere) for prospects like those two + a prospect (Kinsler, Laird, Botts) or two extra. This was a deal that would have been realistic, was available to anyone following the game (after all, Gonzalez and Young WERE traded for less), and would have restocked us a bit. After all, Schmidt WAS leaving at the end of his contract and he WAS losing some of his “verygoodness.” The team at the time may have appeared close to the Wild Card, but it wasn’t going anywhere…and as we look back, it didn’t go anywhere. No Beltran, No Guerrero, no A-Rod. No History. Instead we got, Vizquel (love the guy, but still), Matheny, Alou (productive, but come on), Benitez, Richie, Winn (I was for it in light of what I foresaw), Morris, Roberts, and Jarred Washburn…I mean Barry Zito.
If the Brewers (Fielder, Hardy, Braun, Sheets, Weeks, Hart), Rockies (Tulo, Holliday, Francis, Corpas, Atkins), and D-Backs (Jesus, nearly the entire team) can restock themselves in a couple of years, the Giants, even an inept Giants franchise, can become decent.
I live in Oregon, so I ‘m not going to any games this season. My son already likes the A’s. I’ll watch them on the MLB package. Otherwise, I too am not going to support them with my money.
mia rocks.
For all the mendacity of “the suits,” they are the ones who stage professional baseball. No “suits” means no Barry blasting balls into the water. I’m a fan of the game–I enjoy watching HS ball or Pony League. But the high level of expertise, craftsmanship and performance we know as “MLB” would not exist, or at least, would not be available to consume, if the “suits” didn’t package, promote and sell it. So they are part of the deal. Unlikeable, certainly, and often much worse, but no different from the businessmen in any other capitalist endeavor. I’m a Giants fan. I’ve come to really dislike Mr. Magowan after years of cutting him slack for buying the team, building the Park and signing Bonds. But the current failure of leadership and the sad treatment of their iconic star spoiled it. Nonetheless, I’m a Giants fan. Fandom–my version, at least–is irrational. I’ll always root for our guys, and by a sort of twisted extension, all that is part of that orange & black SFG, even the creepy boardroom types like Baer and Magaowan! I’ll shed no tears over them, like I would for a fave ballplayer, but I’ll accept them as part of the package. These days, I’m more likely to attend an NCAA game or a minor-league contest, because the “ballpark experience” makes me ill. Sadly, that is not an At&T monopoly–go to any MLB stadium and you’ll see the same nonsense distracting us from enjoying the show: cell phones, loud rock music, contests, big-screen TV bits, ridiculous prices, hordes of non-fans, etc. Even the venerable Yankees are catching the wave and tearing down their magnificent park for a “new and improved” version. All the posts here have been heartfelt and engaging. I do hope you guys stick by our boys, after all, the fans always get screwed. It comes with the territory. We take it, then get back up off the mat and give the team our love all over again. Besides, you’ll miss Matt and Tim.
I agree with you to a certain extent when you write MLB “…would not be available to consume in the fashion with which we are familiar.” Which is from the fans standpoint. You’re quite right. There would be no cathedrals built in the image of owners, named Asscom Banc Uno Park at Belkins Enron World Com Bear Stearns Yard in honor of whatever the going corporate pimp rates are at the moment.
You’re correct. Gone would be 30 dollar charges for the privilege of renting 160 sq ft worth of potholes for 4 hours. No forking over $19.00 for flaccid hot dogs, rancid smelling fat-fried potatoes, and flat beer sloshed up in containers more suited for Jello. No more $68.00 Field level ticket just for the privilege of having some poor stiff making minimum wage hold a sign in your face between batters to prevent you from returning to your seat. As if this edifice had now been raised to the status of Le Grande Opera and Mario Lanza himself had been resurrected from the dead, expressly for the purpose of staging a command performance for the Royal Family of Magowan.
You’re right. There would be no amusement parks with swimming pools, water slides, patio dining, playgrounds, arcade games, sixty-dollar pizza and costumed mascots mingling amongst the crowds. It would all be gone. At least the superfluous “ballpark experience” part of it. The peripherals would vanish. Along with the cretins on cell phones and idiots who treat players and other spectators like zoo animals. And all that we would be left with is: The Game. It would still be played. Players would still play. It would be dispersed to smaller venues, but they would still be playing. They would make a living doing other things. But they would still play. And the casual spectator, (the one pandered to by owners) would go do something else. And the hardcore baseball fan would find another team to follow.
The game has been distorted by the marketing twits, and non-baseball people, to the point of complete dehumanization of the players. Its all about the “ballpark experience” now. Well, Mr. Owner, when you hire frauds and their cronies to run you operation and throw out onto the field a collection of overage wine sipping carpetbaggers that people resent, anyway, and then follow it up with a cynical, ego maniacal attempt at mind erasure, you’re not necessary to me and thousands of others anymore. When an owner insinuates his countentance as the face of the franchise and tries to pawn off dollar for dollar, potentially the worst team in the history of baseball as “All out, all the Time”, its time for me to focus my baseball attention elsewhere.
One thing that Magowan and others of his ilk forget. They are temporary stewards. Owners like Stoneham go broke. Owners like Lurie get worn out and sell. Other owners die off. The point being, that no owner will ever outlive the team to which he temporarily runs roughshod over. Even Steinbrenner came to the realization that all his caterwauling for face time over the years accomplished was to make him a laughingstock. Mr. Magowan is fast reaching that point. If he hasn’t figured it out, he only has to look down the road to the Forty Niners ownership. All the money in the world cannot prevent somebody from making themselves a complete ass and a figure of scorn, and ridicule. And every bit of it will be earned.
I like your point about “stewardship.” Indeed, the current ownership group will not stay intact forever. I would have given them high marks for adding “value” not too long ago. But, as has been well-documented on this site, we’ve watched them trash a franchise with great history and then attempt to shift the blame to Barry and who-know’s-who. Despite my irrational love of the team, this vexes me quite a bit. I’m not sure the “de-humanization” of the players is any worse now than in the earlier days of the game. Capitalism, ultimately, turns everything in to a commodity. Before Marvin Miller, players were chattel. Free agency is certainly better for them than the reserve clause, even in our media-saturated corporation-dominated world. Marc’s point aboout “oligopoly” is more apt, I think. Magowan & Co. only “compete” against the other members of their exclusive club. If the protected status of MLB’s monopoly were removed, then perhaps competition would allow new forms of the game to emerge, and fans could chose the experience that best suited their sense of how it ought to be. (On a personal note, I’m traveling to Mexico this summer and will get to see “La Liga.” I’m really curious about the differences in the professional game, and what fans there expect. And whether or not La Liga delivers that!)
I disagree about the “MLB would not exist” argument. There is no business if there is no demand, and the stadiums and players and seats were not created by the management and ownership – they were paid for by us. We pay the $90 million is salaries, we buy the tickets, we watch the games on TV.
Baseballs’ problem is that it’s, I guess the word would be oligopoly. The “ownership”, which all started so people would have a place to sit in 1876, is sitting on a goldmine, and they have no competition, no-one telling them what to do, no real market forces affecting them. What are you going to do otherwise? Go see the A’s? Go to San Jose? It’s all the same. The Giants will be profitable for the next 20 years if the team loses 100 games every year.
There’s good ownership, there’s bad ownership, but there isn’t “losing money” ownership. MacGowan could give a shit – I sound like Joe Morgan here (god help me), but I can almost guarantee that the financial forecasts say the team we have right now is exactly what gives them the best financial return. Near as I can understand it, short of making the playoffs, it really doesn’t make that much of a difference in dollars and cents.
Kadir Nelson’s new book will make you forget about the Giants for a second and appreciate one hell of a book. I highly recommend it, especially to those of you with young children. I may have to buy a second copy to cut out some of the pages for prints. Great, great stuff.
ok boys and girls….here is the opening day lineup….read it and weep
C – Bengie Molina
1B – Rich Aurilia
2B – Ray Durham
SS – Omar Vizquel
3B – Jose Castillo
LF – Dave Roberts
CF – Aaron Rowand
RF – Randy Winn
with zito on the mound
I don’t believe the Opening Day lineup is going to be even that, ahem, “good”.
Isn’t Bocock going to be the starter at short with Omar still on the shelf?
I’m predict here:
Giants, best case scenario- 70 wins
What it’ll probably be- 61 wins
What it’ll be if Cain or Lincecum get hurt- 55 wins
I don’t think the win total will change much if Cain or Lincecum get hurt. I think Lincecum’s last start will be pretty much the norm:
No runs on 4 hits, 7 strikeouts in 5 innings for a no-decision.
Since this team cannot score runs they can’t leave starters out there for more then six innings till they’re forced to pinch hit. I don’t expect much statistical magic from any starter.
61 wins is a good call. 64 wins would be a miracle.
So…who do we draft this season? Next, when we have the first pick?
Giants suck. It’s Opening Day. I’m off work to celebrate. Alex Gordon just went really deep. I love baseball. Giants will suck for the next X number of years. We have Cain, Lincecum, the best two announcers in baseball, a beautiful park and a beautiful city. Yeah, yeah, Magowan’s taking advantage of those last two points and the announcers don’t matter THAT much relative to the team on the field. It’s Opening Day and I’m just happy. (Actually I’m really happy because my Real Betis came back and beat Barcelona 3-2 this weekend…one mid-sized Spanish soccer club is the one sports “team” that actually affects my moods.) Tomorrow, I’ll be pissed at the Giants…but still happy with my Betis boys.